'Once Upon a Time's' Giancarlo Esposito on the Magic Mirror and Evil Queen's 'interesting relationship'

Share this:

“Once Upon a Time” is introducing a new character in Sunday night’s (Oct. 30) episode – the Magic Mirror, played by Giancarlo Esposito (“Law & Order,” “Breaking Bad”). He tells Zap2it how he’s working to make his dual characters very different and teases what’s to come for Emma Swan.

“The Magic Mirror is a character who is under the Evil Queen’s thumb. He tells her the truth but in a very interesting, snide and challenging way because she can’t hurt him anymore,” says Esposito. “You don’t really know how he got in the mirror, but you know that that is his world that is inescapable for him. He’s able to have attitude wtih the Evil Queen where no one else can.”

We’re sure the Evil Queen, played by Lana Parrilla, really appreciates that. But Parrilla’s Mayor definitely does not have the same type of relationship with Esposito’s Storeybrooke character.

“In Storybrooke, I play Sidney, who is the editor of the newspaper and knows everyone in town, he’s quite affable,” says Esposito. “A little bumbling once awhile because he gets nervous when he’s around the Mayor. She’s obviously very forceful, very powerful and a little threatening.”

“I wanted to make the characters very, very different. One having a sense of bravado and the other having a sense of vulnerability,” he continues. “Sidney’s a lot more controlled by the Mayor than the Magic Mirror is by the Evil Queen. The Magic Mirror has the ability to tell her what she doesn’t want to hear and challenge her. He eggs her on and moves her toward a fight and there’s nothing she can do about it. She could do a few things, but she really can’t stop the mirror because she confides in it. It’s a very interesting relationship that they have.”

We hope to find out eventually how the fairtytale character became trapped in the mirror and Esposito teases that we hopefully won’t have to wait too long.

“I do think we’re going to get to that and more than likely we’re going to get to that very soon,” he says.

And something else he teases for us that Sidney the newspaper editor and Emma Swan may not be getting along in Storybrooke.

“I don’t want to give away too much of the story of what’s to come. Sidney’s very affable, but he does get put up to do something by the Mayor that he has to do and he starts to bump heads with Emma Swan,” says Esposito.

We can’t wait to see it. “Once Upon a Time” airs Sunday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.